US President Donald Trump has linked his drive to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought “purely of peace” as the row over the island threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe.
Asked by NBC News in a brief telephone interview if he would use force to seize Greenland, Trump said “No comment,” adding he would “100 per cent” follow through on plans to hit European nations with tariffs without a Greenland deal.
Trump has intensified his push to wrest sovereignty over Greenland from fellow Nato member Denmark, prompting the European Union to weigh hitting back with its own measures.
The dispute is threatening to upend the Nato alliance that has underpinned Western security for decades and which was already under strain over the war in Ukraine and Trump’s refusal to protect allies which do not spend enough on defence. Trump’s threat has rattled European industry and sent shockwaves through financial markets amid fears of a return to the volatility of 2025’s trade war, which only eased when the sides reached tariff deals in the middle of the year.
In a text message on Sunday to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, Trump said: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
Norway’s government released the messages yesterday under the country’s freedom of information act. Stoere had sent an initial message on behalf of himself and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, calling for de-escalation of tensions and suggesting a call, eliciting a response from Trump less than half an hour later.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee annoyed Trump by awarding the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize not to him but to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
In his message, Trump also repeated his accusation that Denmark cannot protect Greenland from Russia or China.
“... And why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?” he wrote, adding: “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
Trump vowed on Saturday to implement a wave of increasing tariffs from February 1 on EU members Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, along with Britain and Norway, until the US is allowed to buy Greenland, home to only 57,000 people. “We are living in 2026, you can trade with people, but you don’t trade people,” Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said during a visit to London yesterday.
In a post on Facebook, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the territory should be allowed to decide its own fate.
“We will not let ourselves be pressured. We stand firm on dialogue, on respect and on international law,” he said. Denmark’s military told Reuters that planes carrying Danish soldiers and Army Commander Peter Boysen would land in Kangerlussuaq, western Greenland, describing it as a “substantial contribution” to the Arctic Endurance military exercise.
Norway’s Stoere amended his schedule, announcing that he would attend the World Economic Forum in Davos tomorrow and on Thursday, overlapping with Trump’s planned appearance at the annual gathering of the global political and business elite.
Trump is expected to deliver a keynote address tomorrow in his first appearance at the conference in six years. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he too would try to meet Trump tomorrow, adding that a trade dispute was not wanted. “But if we are confronted with tariffs that we consider unreasonable, then we are capable of responding,” Merz said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would be “very unwise” for European governments to retaliate.
“I think it’s a complete canard that the president will be doing this because of the Nobel prize. The president is looking at Greenland as a strategic asset for the United States,” he told reporters in Davos.
EU leaders will discuss their options at an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday.
One option is a package of tariffs on 93 billion euros ($108bn) of US imports that could automatically kick in on February 6 after a six-month suspension. Another option is the “Anti-Coercion Instrument” (ACI), which has never yet been used and which could limit access to public tenders, investments or banking activity or restrict trade in services, in which the US has a surplus with the bloc, including in digital services. The EU said it was continuing to engage “at all levels” with the US but said the use of its ACI was not off the table.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for calm discussion between the allies, adding that he did not believe Trump was considering military action to seize Greenland. Russia declined to comment on whether the US designs on Greenland were good or bad but said it was hard to disagree with experts that Trump would “go down in... world history” if he did take control of the island.
l European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that Europe has no interest to pick a fight with the US but has a slate of tools to protect its interests.
“Arctic security is a shared transatlantic interest, and one we can discuss with our US allies. But tariff threats are not the way to go about this,” Kallas said in a post on social media platform X after meeting with Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt in Brussels.
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